Your Salmon Could Contain Cocaine and Antidepressants

If you've been buying salmon for dinner, you might want to think twice about cooking it up. Apparently the popular, omega 3-rich fish has been contaminated with drugs like Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, bug spray, and—most terrifyingly—cocaine.

According to the Seattle Times, salmon caught near Seattle in Puget Sound have been tainted by waste water, which contains 81 drugs and even personal care products, from sewage-treatment plants. As a result, dozens of drugs have been found in tissue samples of chinook salmon, including Flonase, Tylenol, Aleve, Paxil, Valium, Zolft, OxyContin, and Nicotene, plus antibiotics and antiseptics.

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Researchers took samples from estuary waters nearby the sewage plants back in September 2014 and have since found a slew of contaminants, though they're unsure exactly how they got into the water to begin with. They do note, however, that the drug levels are among the highest in the nation.

In response to these findings, the permit administrator from the Wastewater Treatment Division in Washington's King County, Betsey Cooper, told the Seattle Times: "You have treatment doing its best to remove these, chemically and biologically. But it's not just the treatment quality, it's also the amount that we use day to day and our assumption that it just goes away. But not everything goes away."